9 Barriers to Extraordinary Life in 21st Century

We live in a world of Abundance and Lazy Consumption in the 21st Century. Pretty much everything we want is just a click away. Yet, our generation is more dissatisfied, more depressed and more unhealthy (physically, mentally, spiritually) than our previous generations. What are we doing wrong?

This is a list of uncommon, unchallenged ideas or habits we have in our time & age, that stop us from creating an extraordinary life. It’s a call out to the rebel in you to challenge each of these items.

Let’s start with an easy one 🙂

#1. Quality of life has only ONE KPI.

Money. Maybe 2 or 3 for some (answer this for yourself if you will). We give so much importance to financial success and almost nothing to any other area. And rightly so, many people give in everything to their jobs or businesses, anything that brings in money, and end up sacrificing all other areas of life.

What about your Intellectual life? Every animal on the planet has their strongest tool, Tigers have their Teeth, Eagles have their wings & sight, humans have their mind. We are not the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the biggest on the planet, yet we are the most dominant species on the planet because of our minds. What are we constantly doing to nurture our minds?

What about your Social Life? Studies show that number one factor that determines your happiness level, is your level of your social connections.

What about your Character? Your character will determine all the KPIs of your life anyway, how do we consciously focus to build it everyday?

What about your Spiritual Life? Humans have deep desire to be connected to a higher source, be it a religion, or Spirituality in general and connection to the universe? How do we grow as a spiritual being?

What about your Love Relationships? Over 40% of the couples divorce in America. One of the million amazing things Tony Robbin said was this “Love to me is not a feeling, it’s an Action”. What actions are you taking everyday to improve your love life?

A very interesting exercise to explore is Lifebook. Lifebook divides your life into 12 different areas (Financial life is #8 in that list), and create strategies for all of those 12 categories to create a more holistic life experience for ourselves.

“It would be so much easier (and cheaper) for the world to make organic food free, than to treat people for cancer for the last 20yrs of their lives”- Eric Edmeades

We are the smartest species on earth, but also we make the dumbest decisions about our own health.

The food marketing industry is more evil that tobacco industry and we don’t realise it.

Today we don’t even realise that we are sick, we have been sick for 15–20yrs because we were never supposed to be eating the stuff we have been eating all our lives.

So today when people have been obese all their lives, they just think it’s who they are.. If someone’s skin has been bad for 10 yrs, they don’t think it’s a problem anymore, it’s just who they are.

Our body’s survival software has been evolving & developing for millions of years, and it’s perfectly designed to make us survive the worst possible conditions imaginable. BUT, with the food choices we learn to make today..

Most people are overfed and under-nutritioned

Most people are constantly dehydrated with abundance of hydration sources 10 steps away (fruits, vegetables and water)

New diseases are popping up every decade.

How did we get to this point?

Here is a brilliant talk by Eric Edmeades who introduced me to this topic and has inspired thousands of people to make conscious decisions with their food. Do yourself a favour and watch this today:

Another recommendation, a book about understanding our body from an evolutionary stand point – Why We Get Sick

Here’s an awesome testimonial of the book from Richard Dawkins (he is considered the modern age Charles Darwin): “Get two copies, and give one to your doctor”

#3. All "Drugs" Are Dangerous

All "Drugs" Are considered dangerous, but alcohol and smoking are acceptable everywhere.

In no way I am recommending to become a pothead or cokehead in life. But today, there is enough research available for us to understand that some substances (I am talking about Psychedelics) can have a therapeutic, and in some cases life-changing effect. People have to go to events like Burning man to be explore these things without being judged (not that I am complaining about Burning Man :)).

But people deserve to know exactly how psychedelics can benefit them and also potentially harm them.

If we categorise every substance in the world (except tobacco & alcohol) one category called “drugs”, and just have a taboo about all the “drugs” in the world, we don’t give people a chance to potentially change their lives in a certain area.

And the ones who are willing to explore this, might not get the best information about it because its not a popular subject to bring up with your friends and family.

Here is a interview of Tim Ferriss with a guy that studied psychedelics as a researcher for over 19yrs.

#5. Our Memory is Considered Useless

Using memory is considered a waste of time and unproductive, and is replaced by technology.

Here’s a common argument:

Why in an age of smartphones, Google, Wikipedia, and ever present internet access, WHY would I bother training my memory?

Why do I want to remember names and phone numbers, my app does it for me?

Why do I have to calculate manually when my calculator in my computer works just fine?

Why should I invest in learning a new language, I will never need it now that Google glass and other advanced translating tech are already available?

Because when you stop using your brain, it starts becoming useless.

Boosting your memory has a direct relation with your creativity. Great thinkers of the ancient world recognise that creativity, focus and critical analysis could only happen in the minds of a well-trained memory practitioner.

Boosting memory and constantly learning new stuff is excellent for mental health. Better memory practitioners reduce their chances of Alzheimer by half.

“There is no learning without memory improvement.” Harry Lorayne, Father of Memory Improvement

Need more convincing, check these out:

The Father of Modern Memory Improvement Harry Lorayne: 60 Years of Mnemonics

Greetings, SuperFriends. Welcome to a very special episode of this week’s show. Today, we’ve managed to book, without…

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#6. The Education System

We want the latest Operating System even if the previous one had just come out a year ago, but the Education system can be a few hundred years old.

I refuse to follow that. I studied Computer Science Engineering at university. While in university, I was interested in Event Management, People Management, Sales & Marketing and Exploring new cultures. I studied all of that on my own time with my own dime.

Today, I am a Personal Transformation Enthusiast with the goal of creating the Disneyland of Personal Growth, Learning and Education. None if this came from my school/university.

Some of my smartest people I know are putting their lives on the line, taking a massive study loan over $100,000 to join the some university for a year or two.

In an age of exponential technologies, new models of work and entrepreneurship, location independence, and new definitions of what it means to lead a meaningful life — it’s time to rethink university. Here’s an alternative that a company that I work with is experimenting right now:

#7. The Overstimulation By The Media & Entertainment Industry

"The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely" - C.K. Brightbill

Stick with me here for a minute..

Mihaly, best selling author of “Flow”, explains that we experience the optimal experience a.k.a “state of flow” when our mind is met with a challenge that just matches our skills.

The natural state of mind is chaos. It is neither useful nor enjoyable.

And state of flow is overcoming the “natural” state of the mind (chaos or psychic entropy).

With the massive growth in the media and entertainment industry, we can easily distract our mind with a passive leisure activity (the biggest example is Television).

But it’s a very poor substitute for “attention invested in real challenges” like creating something or investing in our skill development.

With so much distraction around us, our attention, in a way, is getting controlled by way too much useless external stimuli.

What can we do?

Once we understand why this happens to us, we can overcome our mind being controlled by the world around us.

Our mind is always seeking something to overcome it’s natural state of chaos or entropy, and overstimulation of external stimuli (which we have little control on) can temporarily fulfil that need.

And also understand that we can consciously choose how to consistently experience “the state of flow” through experiences that actually contribute to our personal development

Here’s an excerpt from the book “The Flow”, that conveys my point perfectly:

“Instead of using our physical and mental energy to have flow experiences, we spend hours each week watching celebrated athletes on TV, instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art we go to museum to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids. We don’t run the risk of acting on our beliefs but spend hours each week watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.

This vicarious participation is able to mask, atleast temporarily , the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges.

The flow experience that results from the use of skills, leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere”

The lesson here is to use our free time wisely, not only because it leads to our personal growth, but also because it gets us in the Flow state.

Passion takes time – a study showed that the strongest predictor for someone seeing their work as a calling, was number of years spent at the job. i.e. the more experience the person had, the more likelihood was to love their work.

Passion is a side effect of Mastery – the better you get at something, the more it becomes a “passion”

With that said, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to turn our hobbies into our dream careers, but even the most successful musicians, artists etc don’t have the “Passion Mindset”..

They adopt something called the “Craftsmen Mindset” and focus only on the process of mastering their craft. Understanding this difference can help a lot of people make better decisions. Read the detailed description here:

#1 Misleading Advice in the name of Passion

In June 2005, Steve Jobs took the podium at Stanford Stadium to give the commencement speech to Stanford’s graduating…

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And that’s it. I hope this inspires some ideas on how you can start shifting your life in the direction you want. Would love to know your thoughts below 🙂